Non Traditional lifestyle and Stress

Technology has empowered our lives everywhere. Mobile phone are the most important and essential part of our day to day life. Traditionally mobile phones were considered as the tool for communication but due to technological up gradation and smart phone invasions mobile phones have been used now a day’s not just for communication but it’s now majorly used as checking emails, shopping online ,accessing news ,downloading music and movies ,engaging self on social networking sites and many more. Every individual is now literally carrying internet in their pocket .Such use of technology has shifted the lifestyle from traditional to non traditional.

Some identifiable stressors are follows:

·         Perpetual Distraction: A study in UK has shown that smart phone user on an average 80-85 times unlocks their phones to check messages and other works. This study can be backed up by the fact that due to high use of technology and smart phones the cognitive skills such as attention, memory and learning has been retarded.

·         Sleep Dysfunction: due to excessive usage of phone and technology has interrupted the circadian rhythm (i.e. sleep-walking cycles) .Poor sleep and its disorders results in poor resilience and higher levels of anxiety and stress.

·         F.O.M.O: (Fear Of Missing Out) A new kind of behavioural disorder has been seen to arise among youngster now a days due to increase in technological interventions this is the fear of missing out on something ; whether it is an event or some post of friends on social networking sites. The more an individual is connected, the more likely is the experience of FOMO.

·         Social Comparison: The social comparison theory suggests that individual’s thought process is governed by social comparison. Social Media, by its nature, actively encourages social comparison, as it is littered with information that can easily be used as metrics of apparent social success (e.g. friends, likes, shares, followers and so forth). 

Dr.Manisha Gupta

Assistant Professor

Department of Management Studies

Decision making  method  in Mathematics

In various situations in life, we have to choose between different alternatives, where the choices themselves are full of uncertainity. Right from infancy , choosing which school to go , at the secondary stage choosing which stream to opt for which career or profession to choose, Which party or candidate to vote for in an election, in which company to invest financially, whether to invest in shares or mutual funds, and so on, there are so many examples where one has to decides without having precise or complete continuous stream of decisions and usually these are tackled on the basis of previous experience, intuition and subjectivity. This blog introduced decision analysis, which takes a rational look at decision making and develops methods for improving decisions in a variety of circumstances. The first difficulty of decision makings the complexity of situations in which decisions have to be made. To overcome this problem decision making in a number of situations will be considered with decision making under uncertainty. There is only one event and the solution procedure is to list the consequences  and select the one  with the best value. Decision making under uncertainty has a  number of possible events, but there is no way of saying which are more likely. The decision criteria  will be used. Decision making under risks allows probabilities  to be assigned  to events and expected values  or expected utilities will be used. Finally, series of sequential  decisions are considered, emphasizing the use of decision trees.

In order to introduced a systematic  approach  to decision making, some techniques that are often used  are payoff tables, opportunity loss , use of posters or probabilities and decision trees. According to the functional cycles of managements, the managerial activities  as a whole is include s five phases or life processes which are planning, organizations, directions, supervision  and control. In performing all of these activities, the management has to face several such situations where they have to make a choice of the best among  a number of alternative courses  of actions. This choice making is technically termed as  decision making, or decision taking. Decision is simply a selection from two or more courses of action. Decision making permeates all management activities . It is essential  for setting objectives, deciding basic corporate policies, preparing future profits and asset requirements of the enterprise.  It also involves determining the future type of organizational structure ascertaining how to motivate personnel’s and accepting innovations , Hence we can define the decision theory as follows.

“A process which results  in the selection from a set of alternative courses of action, that course of action  which is considered to meet the objectives of the decision problem more satisfactory then others as judged by the decision maker.” Or in other words “ The process of logical and quantitative analysis  of all factors  that influences the decision problem, assist the decision maker  in analyzing these problems  with several course of action  and consequences.” Therefore one can use this techniques  to make a decision in a  situation of fuzziness in life problems.

Dr. Hakimuddin Khan 

Associate Professor

 Department of Information Technology

What are taxes?

A charge which is mandatory imposed by the Government on income earned by individual or corporate, goods , services or any activity in order to raise revenue. It is considered as the penalty to live in this world. Taxes are charged to raise fund for various public expenditure. In terms of law failure to pay tax is a punishable act. There are various types of taxes , such as  income tax, property tax, capital gain tax, service tax, value added tax, excise duty tax, GST etc.

Taxes are divided into two parts:

·         Direct Tax

·         Indirect Tax

Direct Tax

Taxes which are paid directly to the government are known as direct tax. It cannot be transferred to another person. Income tax, Corporate Tax, Capital Gain tax, Property tax etc are considered as direct tax. Direct taxes may be adjusted to the individual characteristics of the taxpayer. Under this system government collects the tax from the person on whom tax it is imposed. Under direct tax system, the taxpayer and tax bearer are the same person. Direct tax is progressive in nature which means that if the income increases, percentage of tax charged  will also increase. i.e. tax payers in the higher tax bracket have to pay higher rate of tax.

Indirect Tax

A tax which is collected by the intermediary from the person who bears the burden of tax and then pays the taxes to the government is known is indirect tax. It can be transferred to another person. Sales tax, value added tax (VAT), excise tax, GST are the few types of indirect taxes. Indirect taxes are collected by supplier of goods and services and are paid by the consumer of goods and services. Thus, the burden of tax is shifted to the final consumer. Hence, indirect tax is regressive in nature i.e. all the consumers have to bear the burden of tax irrespective of their capacity to bear tax. Under indirect tax system, tax payer and tax bearer are two different persons.

Dr. Himani Gupta

Associate Professor

Department of Management Studies

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs are frequently thought of as national assets to be cultivated, motivated, and remunerated. It can be difficult to explain the difference between the term businessman and entrepreneur.  An entrepreneur has the ability to change the way we live and work. Their innovations may improve standards of living, and in addition to creating wealth with entrepreneurial ventures, they also create jobs and contribute to a growing economy. However, businessman is someone who is starting a business with no innovation or invention. Entrepreneurship is important for a number of reasons, from encouraging social development to innovating the lifestyle.

Entrepreneur have a personality that allows them to believe and take risks as well as enjoy the process that other people find distasteful, some people think that they can do something better then another one in any aspects of the business. They are someone who organizes the factors of creative new product or service and they know how to catch up opportunities to turn a dream into reality. They have skills as vision, motivation and determination as well as have initiative and desire to take risks in order to benefit from the profit. They should be creative, innovative and confident about what they are doing as well as just themselves know what exactly they are doing to make dream come true.

In fact, for those who are wanted to become success entrepreneur, they have to know that money is not the important thing at all for best business.

Ms. Anshu

Assistant Professor

Department of Management Studies

Detection of Malicious nodes inVanet

Detection of Malicious nodes inVanet

Vehicular Ad hoc Network provides vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to roadside communication by a self-configuration type of network. Through the nodes the data is shared representing themselves as servers and clients across the network. Computers, communications, management technologies, sensor and control innovations comprises of several components. For integration of these functions there can be an improvement in the functioning of a transportation system. By using Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks the warnings related to the environmental hazards, traffic, road conditions and data regarding the transmission amongst vehicles is provided. The information can be spread across the network if there is any kind of traffic jam or road closure.  This saves time and also helps the drivers for avoiding the specific routes.

Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS) attack is an attempt made by an attacker from different location for stopping the legitimate users from the system for accessing the required objects. Examples of the DDOS attack are as follows:
i)            Flooding the network prevents access of legitimate network traffic.
ii)      Disruption of the connections amongst two machines prevents users to access service.
iii)    Through preventing one individual user to have access to it prevents the user from    accessing a service.

Within the DDOS attacks there are different tools utilized. Even though they have different name they have same basic structure of the tools. Following are the components as shown in figure .
·      Attacker: If the hacker uses the personal computer it is the responsibility of the hacker.
·     Master: the system receives direct command from the attacker also the other agents are controlled by it.
·     Handler: through this program the tasks are performed on the program master system.
·     Agent: the system directly attack the target
·  Demon program: with the help of this program the above tasks are performed on the agent system.

Garima Saini

Assistant Professor

Department of Information Technology.

Mobile Forensics

Mobile forensics is a branch of digital forensics related to the recovery of digital evidence from mobile devices. With the continued growth of smart phone market, the probability of their use in criminal activities has continued to increase. Mobile phone nowadays comes with a wide variety of software application, new technologies and operating systems. Therefore it becomes complicated for a forensic investigator to examine the evidence from a mobile phone. A proper knowledge of forensic tools and their features is required to collect relevant information.Forensics Operating system like android, being open source, is an advantage for the software developers; but, it is the biggest disadvantage for forensic analysts, as they have to craft and implement new methods for breaking into the device and performing forensic analysis. The methods of performing forensics analysis and data acquisitions on mobile devices are not constant. Investigators must adapt to new methods and change their approach each time they perform forensic investigation on mobile devices.

Important aspects of cell phones which are to be analysed:

· Internal memory

· SIM card

· Memory card

· Network provider

Important data types which can be extracted from the forensic analysis of mobile devices are - Text messages, contacts, history, photos, audio, video, GPS location, emails, memos, calendar, documents, web-history such as use of social media applications like Facebook, twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp etc.

The Chip-Off and JTAG methods are increasingly gaining popularity because of capability of this method to by-pass complicated phone locks and drive encryption. Ultimately, the tool on which forensic analysis is performed will be provided with physical image of the memory chip from that mobile device. In Chip-Off method, the chip is removed or unmounted from the circuit board of the mobile device and testing and programming is done using JTAG (Joint Test Action Group). This method requires the knowledge of location of the chip and JTAG connectors in the device. Along with this, the person must have the knowledge of dismantling and repairing the hardware of the device. The main difference between Chip-Off and JTAG method is that, in the chip extracted during Chip-off analysis cannot be remounted again in the device unlike the JTAG where the connections can again be soldered. Hence, Chip-Off is normally used on damaged devices. This physical image is created by bit-by-bit copy of data stored on memory chip. There are many cases, where calculating a physical dump is not possible with physically extracting the storage chip. Today with such a fast growing pace of mobile devices, it is impossible to design a customized tool for every device, but the physical dump obtained from a memory chip can be analysed in a similar way. Even though Chip-off and JTAG are complicated processes, due to their output obtaining capabilities, there use is on the rise. Sometimes, forensic experts need to analyse mobile devices which are completely damaged in an accident or even sometimes the suspects damage it on purpose, in-order to destroy the evidence, during such time, this method can be very effective and where the other processes fail.

Ms.Sonali Sharma

(Assistant Professor-IT)

Department of IT

BEWARE, LOOK OUT : How Much Should We Trust ALEXA & SIRI!!!

Voice assistants are making our lives easier day by day. Instead of having to get up to turn on the lights, open the doors, draw the curtains, switch on the AC’s, or tomake that call while driving we can simply ask them to do it for us. Not only that, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or IphoneSiri allow you to call and search businesses, services,answer mails via voice too, with no need to input a phone number or text anywhere. We all read the news recently as reported Bloomberg in April that human reviewers listened to Amazon Alexa recordings. The news came as shock to many users like me as well. A lot of people got worried that voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri or the Google Assistant are spying on us at home. All three companies have said the assistants are not listening all the time, but only listen for a wake word — or perhaps hidden commands humans can’t hear.

The worry is why do tech companies want to hold on to information from our homes at first placef? Is it because no one stopping them and theymight be using this data for training purposes. When asked, “Any data that is saved is used to improve Siri,” Apple said.“Alexa is always getting smarter, which is only possible by training her with voice recordings to better understand requests, provide more accurate responses, and personalize the customer experience,” Beatrice Geoffrin, director of Alexa privacy, said in a statement. The recordings also help Alexa learn different accents and understand queries about recurring events happening around us, she said. Surely we all want to benefit from AI that can set a timer or save energy when we don’t need the lights on. But that doesn’t mean we’re also opening our homes to tech companies as a lucrative source of data to train their algorithms and one day in any big breach for fault of ours maybe we lose all this data in the wrong hands. This data should belong to us.

Another security issue has come in light for these leading voice assistants—and this time it isn't manufacturers recording our conversations. A new scam has been exposed, where fraudsters are hiding behind convenient auto-dial features to lure unsuspecting users into a trap. What we do now days is blindly trust these Voice Assistants for searching random businesses though internet and call on these unknown numbers without verifying the authenticity of service provider. The fraudsters have realized that people search for businesses and then call them, all without viewing the online entry for the business itself. And that has opened up a major risk that those businesses are not what they might seem.According to the Better Business Bureau, a private, nonprofit organization in USA since 1912 some scammers have apparently gamed Google and Amazon's phone number ranking systems. Unsuspecting users could end up talking to an imposter instead of the desired business.

As reported by BBB in a latest survey that consumers reached out to it after almost falling for scammers who tried to charge them nonsense fees. One such victim used some form of voice search to call an airline in the hope of changing her seat. A con artist then tried to make her pay $400 in pre-paid gift cards for the service, but luckily, she didn't fall for the trick. Another customer used Siri to contact support for his printer, only to find himself connected to a scammer.

Not only that Every kind of home or office appliance now a days is also becoming a data-collection device. According to the data, the average US household contains 17 smart devices while European homes have an average of 14 devices connected to the network.(source  Cybersecurity in an IoT and mobile world (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic). All these gadgets are supported by Alexa or Siri. Amazon acknowledges it collects data about third-party devices even when you don’t use Alexa to operate them. It says Alexa needs to know the “state” of your devices “to enable a great smart home experience.” But keeping a record of this data is more useful to them than to us. Amazon could delete everything it had learned about our home, but we can’t look at it or stop Amazon from continuing to collect it. Google Assistant also collects data about the state of connected devices. But the company says it doesn’t store the history of these devices, even though there doesn’t seem to be much stopping it.One more fear prevailing many of us due to this iscould a hacker tap into one or all of these devices and eavesdrop on us? The official answer is no, and specific technical reasons are cited. However, as quoted by The Palmer Group several theses for 2017 including, "Anything that can be hacked will be hacked." Anyone who believes otherwise is simply naïve. One such hacking was recently reported by a couple too ,

Siri or Alexa is NOT dangerous. The data it collects is NOT dangerous. Nothing about an Amazon Echo is dangerous. But who does what with our data is shivering thought.In today date n time, Data is more powerful than the being itself. It is an immutable law of 21st-century living, which in this case means that the most serious threat to each of us is the profile that can be created with the willing suspension of our agency. Most of us have no idea how much information about us all is available for sale. The willing suspension of agency has the potential to take us right up to the line that separates where we are now from an Orwellian future. (Many people believe we already live in a surveillance state. We'll explore this in another article.)We Must Deal with This Sooner or Later.

Just before winding up this article I searched for home automation with Alexaon amazon.in and it showed me 1000 results found in Home Improvement, Home & Kitchen, Books and Electronics department with huge Diwali offers. Not only that Amazon on Wednesday September 25, 2019  during the new hardware launch of its Alexa enabled device launched Amazon Loop , Amazon Frames , Echo Buds, General Motors Alexa Integration, Amazon Smart Oven, The Ring Indoor Camand many more. It was rightly said by Blake Kozak, an IHS Markit smart home analyst,  "Consumers who were on the fence before, they may stay away," Kozak said about users' reactions to this year's privacy issues. "But consumers that use these devices won't throw them away."

The world will be a very different place when Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and other AI-empowered players have assembled first-party profile data that includes our agency. It will make what they do with our current behavioral profiles look like primitive data processing.We are predisposed to pay for convenience. We happily do it with cash and with data every day. However, we should not suspend our judgment about the implausibility of this narrative for convenience or for the quality of our enjoyment. Though this is a story we have been told before, there are no conventions of this medium. So let me be the first to scream: "Look out!"

Dr. Harsha Ratnani

Associate Professor

Department of IT